Books Read
-
The Sleeping Dragon (Guardians of the Flame #1) – Abandoned
The Sleeping Dragon by Joel Rosenberg Published: 1983 This is the first book I’ve abandoned midway through in as long as I can remember. It’s something I have an incredibly hard time doing, but I should do it more. If I’m not enjoying a book, I’ll usually just let it ruin reading for me completely for a month while I struggle through it. There’s really no point in that. Nick Hornby abandons books he’s not enjoying, so I’m using that to justify this. This is the story of a group of university students who find themselves transported into a fantasy world while playing a game of Dungeons & Dragons. They…
-
Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal
Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach Published: 2013 Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller I loved Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers when I read it last year, so I was quite excited to pick this up. It’s all to do with the digestive system and the research that goes into understanding it and treating its problems. It’s a topic that must have a lot of bizarre stories, which is what Mary Roach likes to dig up. As someone with Crohn’s disease, I figured this would be right up my alley. They even mentioned it in the blurb! I wanted to love this, but I found a…
-
Old Man’s War
Old Man’s War by John Scalzi Published: 2005 Oh, right! I have a weblog… Sorry for my absence. Life’s been a bit much lately, and I’ve mainly been hiding under my bed, but I’d like to get back into this now. I read Old Man’s War nearly a month and a half ago, and I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to get to it. I’m a naughty blogger. My dad hounded me for ages to read this, but it just wasn’t high on my priorities. I read Redshirts last year, and it didn’t leave me wanting more of his writing, but I’m glad I decided to give him…
-
Mother Night
Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut Published: 1961 My fourth Vonnegut, and I’m more in love with his writing with each one. This is the fictional autobiography of Howard W. Campbell, who is being held in an Israeli jail for crimes against humanity. He was born in America and moved to Germany as a adolescent. As Hitler began gaining power, he stayed in the country and worked as a playwright, but as the war drew near he was approached by an American spy to work undercover for them. He worked on the radio, sending coded messages out under the cover of Nazi propaganda. Unfortunately, he was maybe too good at his…
-
The Ocean at the End of the Lane
The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman Published: 2013 Narrated by: Neil Gaiman A man returns to his childhood home after attending a funeral and finds himself drawn to the neighbouring home of a little girl he once knew but had forgotten. Memories start flooding back, and he remembers himself as a young boy stumbling across a tragic scene, one that allowed the unworldly access to our world. I don’t think I was in the right frame of mind for this novel. I love Neil Gaiman and have read everything by him, except for most of his comics (and his Duran Duran biography obviously), but something…
-
Housekeeping vs. The Dirt
Housekeeping vs. the Dirt by Nick Hornby Published: 2006 Nick Hornby’s thoughts on his monthly reading and book buying habits continue with this second collection of his Believer column. I still wasn’t entirely sure what the Believer was, so I just hopped over to their website and had a quick look. I’m very pleased to announce that it’s not a Christian magazine, as I had briefly suspected. They describe the magazine as follows: The Believer is a monthly magazine where length is no object. There are book reviews that are not necessarily timely, and that are very often very long. There are interviews that are also very long. We will…
-
Mogworld
Mogworld by Yahtzee Croshaw Published: 2010 If you have any interest in video games at all, there’s a good chance you’ve watched Yahtzee Croshaw’s web series, Zero Punctuation, where he critiques games to within an inch of their lives. He’s also released a few indie computer games, co-opened a video game themed bar, and written two books. He’s the sort of person that makes you feel bad about all of your abandoned, and unstarted, projects. Mogworld, his first novel, is from the perspective of an undead zombie horde member, Jim, inside a massively online role-playing game (a la World of Warcraft). He isn’t aware of that, though. All he knows…
-
Wool Omnibus
Wool Omnibus by Hugh Howey Published: 2012 Narrated by: Amanda Sayle I’ve been in a bit of a reading slump lately. I was even on holiday last month and somehow managed to spend a week on a beach in Hawaii without reading a thing, which you wouldn’t even think was possible. Life’s been quite stressful these last couple of months, and I’ve been having a hell of a time concentrating on anything for more than a moment. I finished listening to Wool ages ago actually, before The Slump began, but I apparently forgot to write this post. Under normal circumstances, this is really not a forgettable book. It’s actually a…
-
Much Ado About Nothing
Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare Published: 1623 I’d like to read at least one Shakespeare play a year until I’ve gone through the lot of them, and I thought since Joss Whedon’s movie adaptation was coming out soon I’d read Much Ado About Nothing for my latest. This is one of the comedies, and the humour ranges from witty banter to near-slapstick malapropisms. The story begins as a prince, Don Pedro, arrives back in Messina with his officers after a victory at war. One of the officers, Claudio, has the hots for the governer’s daughter Hero and plans to marry her. The governer’s niece Beatrice is also there…
-
About a Boy
About a Boy by Nick Hornby Published: 1998 I’ve read several of Nick Hornby’s books, but until now I’d somehow managed to miss two of his most famous – About a Boy and High Fidelity. I didn’t skip them out of some hipster need to stay obscure, it’s just that all of the copies I’d stumbled across had the movie tie-in covers. I wouldn’t consider myself a book snob – I actually enjoyed The Da Vinci Code when I read it – but I’m definitely a cover snob. I’m fine with novels being adapted to screen. I’m even fine with, and often in favour of, screenwriters changing parts of the…